Now, I didn’t become known as The Women’s Empowerment Queen for nothing! With faith; personal will, strength, desire and the ability to “act” accordingly; I’ve always rose to the occasion–be it my near-fatal car accident, accepting my diagnosis of my rare brain disorder, working around my partial paralysis…and now: this recent hospitalization. It has been the hardest 3+ years for my personally, but in accepting and compensating for my new “news” whether good or bad, I found peace within myself.

What’s truly amazing is that with all my “life’s tests”; each time I thought things could not get any worse…BANG! Months later I’m faced with something harder! Since there are numerous things I can do to prevent my fainting, blacking-out, nausea, insomnia and massive weight-lost; I feel this is my biggest test-yet-again! So, I decided to empower myself and you not with my own tried-and-true empowering processes by opening my doors to hear what others have to say about this topic!

I first met Linda by this article about her “Secret Challenge”.I asked her specifically to write about “Empowerment” anticipating that she already had an opinion on the topic…I’m glad I empowered her to empower herself by going through this empowering process herself (phew…that’s a ton of “empowering” huh?)

Amanda’s mom, she’s also a great cook who shares her homemade recipes like chicken soup at PJMommy.com and maintains her own Best Kept Recipes blog. Still on bed-rest, I’d love to have some homemade chicken soup, but I’m not being picky with my options since hubby and Daddy are doing great on their own, that I don’t want to give orders or recommendations Please welcome Linda as she empowers us, by first empowering herself!

Empowering You To Action

In order to approach this article in a clear and intelligent way, I have to admit that the internet was one of the first places I researched. Empowerment. That one word means so many things to so many women I know and have read about that in order to honor their accomplishments; I needed to be more aware of what exactly the word meant.

Here is what empowerment is defined as: the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes. Central to this process are actions which both build individual and collective assets, and improve the efficiency and fairness of the organizational and institutional context which govern the use of these assets.

Wow. The meaning I was going to write down was much less interesting. Great thing this internet is, it’s so empowering! Ask five different people what empowerment means and you’ll get five different answers.

Though I’ve come quite a ways over the past several years, it wasn’t that long ago that I didn’t even come close to anything resembling empowerment. As a matter of fact, I’d describe myself as being more disempowered. But anger is a great motivator for me and that’s where it all began. I got angry, and then I got going. And I’ve never looked back.

I equate my epiphany into empowerment as sort of a Waldo-type experience. Remember those books from the early 1990’s, called Where’s Waldo? They were large, glossy paged books with a lot of busy, crowded people and things all over the pages. The object was to find Waldo – a sort of silly looking fellow with poindexter eyeglasses, ski cap, and a goofy smile. It wasn’t an easy task, yet once you found him, you couldn’t un-find him. Kind of like those magic eye pictures. And once I found empowerment, (my Waldo) I wasn’t going to let it go.

To make a long story short, as soon as I got going, then let go of the anger, wonderful things began to happen. I had epiphanies and empowerment. I don’t think you can have one without the other, at least for me it works that way. But then I realized that I can hone my creative skills and incorporate them into the internet somehow.

I am a dedicated, firm believer that you can be, do, or have anything you want; the sky’s the limit! I recall a scene from the movie “Baby Boom” with Diane Keaton. A very, funny movie, but one scene that stands out is when she asks a plumber to come over because she has no water. They are outside standing by the well on a sunny, winter day. He tells her that her well has run dry. (an obvious metaphor for her life’s creativity). She tells him to just pull the hose over and fill it up! He laughs and explains that that’s just not how it’s done, that you have to dig a whole new well and that costs time and lots of money. This is where she loses it. She grabs him by the coat and starts yelling and crying that she just wants to turn on the faucets and have water come out and she doesn’t care where it comes from, then she screams and faints!

Absolutely one of my top three favorite scenes in a movie; you know why? Because that’s exactly how I conduct my life. I want the good stuff to happen – like running water, I want the blessings that come with empowerment to keep flowing. I don’t have to ask how; I just have to know that they’ll come. They really do.

I diligently keep striving toward my goals and will not let anything stand in my way of what I want to do with my life. I don’t steamroll over things to get the job done, but I prioritize my life, keeping my wants and needs way up there on the list. Less Linda equals less empowerment, and I don’t want that well to run dry.

By Linda Behrens, Owner of BestKeptRecipes.net

Author of Self-Help, Home & Garden and Natural Approach Categories at PJMommy.com

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Posted on July 19th, 2007 by Ponn Sabra
Filed under: Empowerment